


If You'll Have Me

by anneapocalypse



Series: A Little More Forthcoming [6]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5965702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/592040">No Time To Say</a>, which you should probably read first. The happy ending they both deserve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You'll Have Me

**Author's Note:**

> Rated M for some innuendo, but nothing explicit.
> 
> Many thanks to [chocochipbiscuit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chocochipbiscuit) for beta-reading.

The heat of late afternoon hangs heavy in the air, and Julie feels sweat drip down the back of her neck as she and Miguel pack up syringes and vials into crates to be moved to storage. Julie’s hands are damp in the heat, and she handles the glass vials carefully, tired from a long day’s work, but feeling a deep and rare satisfaction from it all. Today’s vaccination clinic was the best-attended yet, with most of the regional staff on hand to help guide traffic, take documentation, and administer the vaccines. Week after next, she’ll be heading south with Arcade to help administer a smaller one-day clinic in Novac. That’s the plan, at least, assuming nothing goes awry in the meantime.

Julie lifts the last crate carefully from the table, mindful of the clink of vials within, and carries it to the back tent. Behind her, Arcade grabs one end of the shaky-legged folding table, and Mona grabs the other. Arcade moves with long strides, and Mona, a full head shorter, grunts to keep up. “Easy there, sasquatch.” Across the courtyard, Raya gathers folding chairs back into the side tents. As always when she walks the back end of the camp, Julie’s attention turns subconsciously to the generators running in the eastern tower, listening for the full rumble that says everything’s still running.

The gate lies open onto the street, where a group of children are kicking a grimy red ball in a circle, playing some kind of game. Julie watches the gate from the corner of her eye as she stops to give her hands a quick wash at the outdoor tap. They began the project of running water into the Mormon Fort some six months after the Dam, one tap out in the courtyard and another for the surgery in the western tower. The difference it makes is staggering. Fresh water straight from Lake Mead, ready and available. Clean hands mean clean work. All the grain alcohol in the world can’t make up for a lack of water. And they’re still dependent on the Garrets for that alcohol, though Julie hopes someday that’ll change.

Change does come, slow as it may be. They’ve come a long way from scraping by on donated stimpaks and Rad-Away. Two years ago vaccines in the Mojave seemed like a distant dream.

But wasn’t an easy road here. The NCR victory at the dam. The courier’s robot-assisted coup against the NCR. The riots on the Strip. The courier’s summary assassination by a single shot to the head while lounging by a window high in the Lucky 38. The assassin was never identified.

The power vacuum was ugly, though Julie supposes it could have been much worse. Emily undertook a near-suicide mission to infiltrate the Lucky 38 and shut down the securitrons permanently. The Three Families scrabbled for power in the absence of leadership, with espionage and skirmishes and outright violence, until the constant atmosphere of fear and paranoia began to drive their business into the ground. The Families reached a chilly detente, formed a sort of Chamber of Commerce where they could talk business and argue and threaten one another like civilized people. And so the Strip runs on, the gamblers still come, from east and west and north and south. Some things do not change.

But the small communities of outer Vegas struggle toward independence, one day at a time, farming co-ops and militias and caravans weaving their disparate populations into a loosely unified web of cooperation. The Mojave begins to heal itself from war, where it can.

Julie gathers up the vaccine records, handwritten on precious paper brought east on on the caravans. The records need to be entered into her terminal in the western tower and the hard copies filed, a task she’ll save for evening, when the tower is cooler. And there are already more people at the gate, of course. Raya brings in a child crying from a fall in the street that has scraped and cut up the side of her leg. Sitting the little girl up on a stool, talking as she cleans the scrape, saying something that makes the child laugh through her tears.

Looking up from the sheaf of pages, Julie gives the courtyard her habitual once-over, looking for anything requiring her immediately attention, and stops her in her tracks, her breath in her throat. For a moment it might be a trick of the light, the woman at the gate, short and square and clad in dusty leather, a rawhide hat over sandy-brown hair in a braid that skims her shoulderblades, because it isn’t possible, it must be some traveler who looks like her—and then she hears one of the guards call from the gate, “Julie, there’s someone here to—”

The woman takes off her rawhide hat, earnest green eyes finding Julie’s from all the way across the courtyard and Julie has crossed half the distance before she realizes she’s moved, the vaccine records left forgotten on Arcade’s table.

Her green eyes gleam, and a gentle smirk crosses her face.

“You never stop moving, do you, Dr. Farkas?”

Julie opens her mouth, and can find no words.

 

You always think of running into a person’s arms, heedless of propriety, but of course Julie’s sense of professional restraint kicks in and she does not fling herself into Major Elizabeth Kieran’s arms in the gateway of the Mormon Fort for all to see. For a moment she can’t _move_ , until she starts at Mona’s hand on her shoulder.

“Go,” Mona says. “We’ve got things covered.”

“Are you sure—”

Mona turns upon her a look of exasperated affection. “ _Julie_. Go.”

 

Julie's room in the western tower does well enough for privacy.

Beth raises her arms in question. “May I…?”

Julie laughs in spite of herself, and when she steps forward Beth doesn’t hold back, muscular arms wrapping her in a familiar embrace, so familiar even after nearly two years. She feels her heart hammer in her chest, her breath shaky over Beth’s shoulder as all the old memories rush back in an instant. All their long talks, the nights, holding each other like this in those too-rare moments. And the way it all ended.

“You have to ask?” she says, finally, over Beth’s shoulder, when she can find the words.

Beth holds her tight, silent for a moment. She smells of dusty leather and campfire smoke, faintly of gunpowder. Her cheek brushes against Julie’s, dry and warm.

“Didn’t know,” she admits softly. “The way I went, at the end…”

“I never blamed you,” Julie insists. “You were in the army. You didn’t have a choice.”

“No,” Beth agrees. “But I wished I had. I didn’t know… how you’d feel about seeing me again. After all this time.”

“But you came,” Julie says. “You came all this way—” She pulls back, now, studying Beth’s face, the same square jaw and broad forehead, this woman she loved and believed she would never see again. “How? Were you alone?”

“I traveled with caravans,” Beth says. “Couriers. I was rarely alone. When I was—” she pats the stock of the sturdy rifle slung on her back.

“And are you…” Julie’s heart is in her throat, but she needs to ask. “...here to stay?”

“If you’ll have me.” Beth gives her a wry smile. “Don’t suppose you know where I can find some work? NCR won’t pay out my pension, long as I’m outside the Republic.”

Julie smiles. “Well, you know, I hear the Followers can always use a hand.”

“That so.” Beth’s smile grows. “I dunno, you know what they say about those Followers back West.”

Julie snorts affectionately. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, you know, they’re okay in my book.” Beth smirks and reaches for Julie’s hand, her drawl growing softer. “I knew this doctor once. She was pretty all right.”

“Oh, you _knew_ her, did you.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

They laugh. Julie has never forgotten that warm, nasal laugh. That California drawl that gets sharper when she’s angry, low and smooth when...

“We could really use someone to run a community food pantry around here,” Julie says. “Got a lot of local farmers staked claim when the sharecroppers went back west. Lot of folks would be willing to work with us if we offered a discount on medical services and supplies, and we’ve got the supplies, now. Just haven’t had the hands to coordinate it.”

Beth grins. “I got some experience in that area, as it happens.”

“Thought you might.”

They clasp hands. Oh, she looks so beautiful. Dust on her nose, a wisp of hair come out of her braid, lying against her cheekbone. Sturdy boots and strong arms. The same old Beth. Like it’s been no time at all.

She feels the same, the same as she always did, and she wants to find a way to say that, somehow but kissing Beth is easier.

Beth makes a soft noise of surprise, only for an instant, her breath against Julie’s lips hot and eager and the pressure of her mouth fierce as she returns the kiss. Hands dragging Julie in tight by her leather belt, hands on her waist and on her hips, the taste of coyote tobacco and honey mesquite and the woman she thought she’d never touch again, warm on her tongue.

She’s slightly out of breath when they finally break.

“That mean you’ll have me, Doctor?” Beth drawls low against her lips.

“I don’t know,” Julie murmurs back. “You know what they say about those soldier girls.”

“What about us supply corps gals? Give you a mouthful, that’s what I hear.”

“You’re _bad_ ,” Julie exclaims with a playful shove.

Beth laughs out loud. “Look, I know you got work to do. I gotta get settled in. What’s a good time for me to stop back in and see you?”

“Where are you settling?”

“Got a room at the Wrangler.”

“I’d have let you stay here.”

“I didn’t want to presume.”

Julie takes her hand again, sturdy palms and work callouses, savoring the touch. “Come by after sundown?”

“You got it.” Beth squeezes her hand and smiles, happiness radiating off her suntanned face. “And when you’ve got the time, I’d love to talk about that food project.”

“You got it,” Julie echoes.

 

They take the tower stairs slowly, Julie following behind Beth, comforted by the sound of her heavy combat boots on the footworn wood. And for a moment it almost feels like it can’t be real, like she might disappear out the gate and never have been here at all. But at the foot of the stairs Beth stops, and her expression softens, looking as though she’s about to say something, and then she doesn’t. She leans in, brushes a kiss to Julie’s lips instead, takes her hand once more and squeezes like she doesn’t want to let go.

But she does, and they step out into the bright sun and Julie blinks twice and stands for a just moment watching her go, the warmth of the kiss still on her lips, a fresh and radiant joy in her heart.


End file.
